Personal Experiences of Paying monthly for car insurance

Monthly cost of car insurance

My friend John currently pays £50.60 per month for his car insurance, which is significantly lower than the £950 annual premium he paid when he first bought insurance, a couple of years after getting his licence. It would be ideal to pay for the whole premium at once, but the large cost of this means that he has to budget for monthly payments. This gets a bit easier as the cost of his insurance goes down over time, but unfortunately, as I’ll discuss later, this cost doesn’t always go down.

Insuring, and re-insuring, with comparison websites

He has always purchased car insurance in the UK by using comparison websites. Using comparison sites is the most helpful way to search for car insurance as you can weigh up the reputation of a company against the amount quoted for a yearly premium. There isn’t much benefit to staying loyal to one insurance company for any length of time, so comparing the rates of several companies every year is the best way we’ve found to get the best price.

Rising premiums for loyal customers

What I find most troubling about purchasing car insurance in recent years is that there is no benefit to having been with one insurer for any length of time. The first insurer he used was Admiral, as he'd received a good quote from them. When his premium went up after the first year, it was by a minimal amount and he didn't think it was worth it to go through the process of changing insurers.

When the premium went up drastically after the second year, however, he went back to comparethemarket.com, and double checked on confused.com, to search for a better rate. he found the same level of insurance with Tesco for around £200 less per year. he phoned Admiral to cancel his insurance, hoping they might be able to match the price quoted by Tesco. Their customer service was very helpful and he was on the phone with a representative for close to 20 minutes while he did everything he could to match Tesco's quote. In the end he said he couldn't find a reason that he shouldn't just take the lower quote as there was nothing he could do to match it.

Issues with using comparison websites

It can be a time-consuming process to search for better insurance rates every year. You can create an account and save your details to use for future searches, but if any of these details change from year to year, you have to fill in the information form again, with details such as your occupation, yearly mileage on the car to be insured, details of other insured drivers, etc. But it’s worth the time to make sure you’re getting the best rate.

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We do not give financial advice on this website. If in doubt get professional advice and always read the policy information before purchasing an insurance contract.